


I Want to Destroy Something Beautiful

by LikeMmmCookies



Series: Angels In Our Veins [1]
Category: American Horror Story: Apocalypse
Genre: Animal Violence, Canon Divergent, F/M, First Time, Loss of Virginity, Mild Sexual Content, The Coven - Freeform, Underage I guess, also canon compliant kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-07 04:54:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16401692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LikeMmmCookies/pseuds/LikeMmmCookies
Summary: Cordelia arranges for Michael to train with the Coven before taking his place as Supreme under the guise of helping him learn control. Michael and Mallory are drawn towards each other, and too late the Coven realizes the evil they've welcomed into their home.I've been trying to find out if an angel bends or breaks or shatters like a stone





	I Want to Destroy Something Beautiful

**Author's Note:**

> Bit of explanation: Cordelia doesn't immediately send Behold and Madison to the Murder House for answers, that comes a bit later (alluded to in the story).
> 
> Come say hi on Tumblr @bisexual-dilemmas

 

**Now**

He can't watch, can't bear it, so he shuts himself up in his room. He hears the crows of delight from the library and he knows what's happening. They've fished the apples from the bucket. Now they hold the dark red fruit in their hands, admiring the shine of the firelight on the unblemished surface. No one will notice the tiny puncture, the gateway that welcomed poison into the honeyed, crisp flesh. The cheers and cries disappear. Now they're biting into it, swallowing Death, gulping it down.

When that _girl,_ the Gray, had thrown him across the room, her power crashed into his mind as real as anything he'd ever felt. “Who are you?” He'd demanded.

His mind told him he should know. That he _did_ know.

She must be one of the witches from the coven he burned to the ground, he surmised. So why did her presence fill him with such anguish, instead of rage? He should be furious. He should have struck her down where she stood. But instead the memory of her frightened doe-eyes just filled him with pain.

He begged his Father for guidance, for wisdom. To See.

And see he did. Flush with dark power, memories had filtered back to him. Of his time at the coven. The witches has done something to him, he was sure of it. Tampered with his memory, put some kind of powerful hex on him so he forgot. But nothing could hide from him for long. Midnight eyes gazed back at him in the mirror. He remembered now. He picked up each memory, watched it with a kind of detached curiosity, and then discarded it again. She didn't matter anymore.

But sure enough, that irritatingly _human_ side of him always wriggled back into his mind, pushing through the Satanic veil he could never maintain for long. He cursed his weakness. The human found those memories, and his soul wept. He'd given her a chance – he'd practically begged her to accept his offer to live. She'd refused.

Screams and wails replace the silence from the library as the humans choke on their own vomit and blood. Bodies thud to the ground one by one.

Her power blinks out. That golden glow – how had he ever forgotten it? He wishes he'd never remembered it.

Mallory, his Mallory. Dead.

He'd killed her.

A solitary tear escapes and races down his cheek.

* * *

 

 

**Before**

 

She finds him outside, sitting against a night-damp wall of the old house she calls home now. Moonlight glints off his hair, turning his flaxen locks into liquid silver. It drips down his ears, pooling in the hollows under his sharp cheekbones and slips off the curve of his full lips. The sound of rending flesh rips Mallory out of her wandering thoughts. Blood drips around his fingers and as she draws closer, horror curls in her belly when she realizes he holds the mutilated body of a frog in his palms, fat and viscera coats his skin. Three spindly legs lay at the ground between his knees.

In an uncharacteristic flash of rage, she drops to his side and snatches the twitching lump out of his hands. "What the fuck are you doing?” She growls at him.

He turns that penetrating gaze of his to her softly illuminated features, a smirk hovering at his lips. He doesn't speak, but even in the dark of the rotting full moon she sees answers swimming in his eyes. If only she could decipher them.

“When I found that woman, that witch your Supreme asked me to fetch, bound in hell, do you know how they tortured her?” His words slide silken and round from his mouth.

She takes a shuddering breath and keeps her own silence.

His smirk twists in a cold smile. “A classroom of children dissecting frogs. Dead, of course. Except for hers. She brought it back to life. And her teacher wrapped his hand around hers and forced her to slaughter the resurrected creature. Then she brought it back to life. And so the cycle repeated.”

Her previous horror chokes out her rage. Her lip curls at him before she turns her gaze to the still-warm body of the shredded amphibian. Her focus turns on an edge and the frog is healing, limbs regenerating. He watches with mild interest. Then the frog shrinks, brown leathery spots twist into its juvenile skin. A tiny croak escapes its throat and the frog, now the size of her thumbnail, leaps to freedom.

When she looks back at him, his eyes are rounded in amazement, a deeply piqued curiosity leaks through his features in a rare display of genuine emotion. He quickly snatches it back, hiding it behind that smooth mask he kept so well.

“Can all witches do that?” He tilts his head a fraction, studying her with a mix of amusement and interest. As if he already knows the answer, but he wants to hear her say it anyway.

“No,” she murmurs. “Only I can do that.” Her eyes narrow briefly before she stands, wiping her bloodied fingers on her nightdress. “There are a lot of things only I can do. Remember that.” She shoots him a final withering look. “I never want to catch you hurting another living creature.”

That awe shimmers in his eyes again, chased by a hint of...shame? His lips part as if to speak but she turns and stalks away, leaving him in the darkness, alone again.

* * *

The first time she saw Michael was two days before, standing stiffly at Cordelia's side, as she announced his sudden presence in their coven. The boy wonder. The first male Supreme.

But not quite.

Cordelia had acknowledged his power, his right to rule, but she wouldn't concede completely yet. She argued that he lacked training and control. And what better place to learn it than among the truly magically gifted, the women? Myrtle snarked that the whining _boys_ lacked the strength to adequately teach him, but Mallory knew her biting remarks were just a cover for her doubt. The whole coven was a bit – put out – with Cordelia at the moment. Even the most adoring among them couldn't help but question her rationale. How could she bring a _man_ into their home? Their sanctuary?

But the dark, chasing glances Cordelia gave Michael as he shook each girl's hand revealed her real reason – she wanted to watch him. _Keep your enemies close,_ Mallory had thought. Who was this boy, that her Supreme was so concerned she didn't dare let him out of her sight?

When Michael reached Mallory and his hand curled around hers, she couldn't help but notice the elegant lines of his long, fine-boned fingers. Then her brown velvet gaze met the sky-blue of his and _something_ shot through Mallory, so strong and foreign that her polite welcome stuck in her throat. Every nerve that met his emitted a galvanized hum through her limbs. That same something flashed in his eyes too, and they froze with hands locked and mirrored stunned gazes until Coco had roughly cleared her throat. Mallory ripped her hand away and glued her eyes to the floor. But after Michael finished his introductions and followed Cordelia to see his new room, she noticed his hands tight at his sides. One fist clenched, but his right hand twitched and stretched as if he'd been shocked. Her own hand tingled for the rest of the day and her heart maintained a rhythm just a beat too fast.

* * *

 

His effect on the house is palpable. Shadows loom longer, dark corners turn deeper. Spells go subtly awry.

No one wants to acknowledge it, but the same thought hovers on the tip of all their tongues.

Cordelia keeps a careful watch on Michael. He joins the girls in their lessons, seemingly content to maintain a stoic and respectful distance at the back. On the third full day of lessons, Cordelia notices he never follows directions, embellishing each spell with extra flourish, just a bit too much, a bit too far. Her gaze, unbidden, slides to Mallory and she realizes with a start that Mallory does the same. She's always done the same. More than they asked. More than they _imagined._

* * *

 

A stir of air at her side draws Mallory's eyes from her book where she reviews that day's lessons on binding spells. She jumps when her gaze lands on the solid form of Michael at her shoulder. He cracks his own book open, thumbing delicately through the pages until his view matches hers. She's about to tell him off but he interrupts her.

“I'm sorry.” The words are shockingly earnest. His gaze skirts to her face. “For the other night. I won't do it again. I promise.”

She nails her eyes to the black and white print of Latin lines in front of her, but focus eludes her. He doesn't continue, doesn't offer an excuse or justification. Just an apology. “Good,” she finally says. Despite herself, a tiny smile tugs at her lips. A soft breath escapes him and tension leaves his broad shoulders.

“Thank you,” he murmurs. A companionable silence settles on them as Zoe slides to the head of the long table to begin the morning lesson.

In the following days, Michael finds himself drifting to Mallory's side at each lesson, each meal. At first, she doesn't speak to him much but she seems to tolerate his presence. Then her curiosity overcomes her. She has a new question each time he appears. “How did the warlocks find you?”

He tells her the story of the shouting man in the grocery store in halting tones. He tries to glaze over the loss of control (twice), but Mallory hears it in the way his voice dips and breaks in the middle of sentences.

When Michael thought back to those incidents before, they'd left him with a sense of pride. Those humans dared to challenge _him,_ to threaten the one person he loved, and they'd paid dearly for it. The ease with which he'd ripped the life from their bodies and sent each despicable soul plunging towards Hell used to carry a satisfied sheen. But recounting them to Mallory, he found himself twisting his words as hard as possible to hide the murders. That's what they were – murders. Yes, he'd lost control twice, but wasn't it just his true nature taking over for him? His birthright, his Father-given powers to dispense justice as he wanted? Now he felt that which he hated the most – shame. He'd felt powerless and he'd lashed out and it _scared_ him. It should scare her too.

But watching his dark tales sink into her eyes, each word was always swallowed whole by a never ending supply of _forgiveness._ That was a sensation he'd never experienced. She thought he was wrong to do what he did – he could see it in her features and the way her mouth twists. But then he'd finish his story and she'd just look at him. Not hatefully or fearing. Just the same as always – a little flash of pain first maybe, but always ending with something soft and loving and foreign.

She asks him questions, but never more than he can bear to answer, and he's grateful for it. Soon, she's answering his questions too. He learns her mother died in childbirth and she never met her dad, doesn't even know who he is. He can relate, to an extent. Her Grandma raised her, taught her to be proud of her powers. But they'd made her childhood lonely. She was a freak to everyone else.

That, he could relate to entirely.

* * *

 

"Today, we're going to practice controlling nature. _Stiricedium_.”

At Zoe's announcement Michael stiffens next to Mallory. She shoots him a sidelong glance. His face is pale and pinched. The rest of Zoe's introduction is lost on them both until she instructs them to partner up to practice. Pairs of witches drift to different rooms of the house, leaving Michael and Mallory alone in the giant dining room, save for Cordelia, who watches unnoticed from the doorway.

“Michael? Are we going to practice the spell?”

“I already know how to do this one,” he says with a flat tone.

She lifts an eyebrow. “So then it should be easy. You can go first,” she says with a tiny smirk.

He just shakes his head once. “No.”

Both her brows go up this time. “No?”

He catches her eye and she finds herself sucked into their ocean expanse. “Last time I did this, I almost killed everyone in the room.”

Her eyes widen and she tries unsuccessfully not to show her fear. “You can't just ignore a skill forever because something bad happened once.”

He shakes his head again. “Yes, I can.” Pain briefly flits over his face. “I could hurt you.” His voice cracks just a tiny bit on the last word.

A strange warmth floods her chest and she finds herself reaching for his hand. “I'll help you,” she assures him.

* * *

 

Cordelia strains to hear their soft conversation and she catches some of his words. “...Kill everyone in the room.” She gulps, ready to spring into the room and separate the two of them, but something holds her back. To her shock, Mallory slips her hand into his, their eyes never leaving the other's face.

She'd noticed the way he kept to her side. Each day it seemed he spent more and more time with Mallory. Often not even talking. Sometimes they studied together. Sometimes he just sat nearby while she read in the evenings, although his eyes were almost always on Mallory and never on his book. It was...troubling. Yet somehow encouraging. Cordelia had never witnessed Mallory manifest anything dark in any sense of the word. Her magic was pure light and goodness. And little by little, Michael's over-the-top spells shifted away from their malevolent bent to something more neutral. Healthier, Cordelia thought. She hadn't stepped in yet because the more time Michael spent with Mallory, the lighter the house seemed to grow, until the magic returned to its normal state. Still, she wondered, about his mysterious past. No one knew where he came from. No one knew who he was. She needs answers.

Her thoughts churn while she watches Michael press his eyes closed. Mallory leans forward, just a fraction, murmuring encouraging words to him.

* * *

 

“What did they ask you to do last time?”

“Turn the water in the air into snow,” he responds with a strained voice. He clenches his jaw and a muscle jumps. The motion sets off something liquid and warm in Mallory's belly. It unfurls and seeps into her legs.

“But I lost control and it turned into a blizzard. They nearly froze to death.”

She squeezes his hand and his grip responds, tight and unyielding. Afraid.

“I'll stop you. I'll be here.” She hesitates then, the words coming out shy. “I'll be your anchor.” She swears she can see pink rise to the apples of his cheeks, just barely a hint.

He lets out a deep breath. “Okay.” His free hand turns up at his side and he slowly extends it straight out from his body in a facsimile of that last, fateful attempt at _stiricedium_. He figures that he probably needs his other hand, but he can't bring himself to let go of Mallory's. Her tiny, delicate fingers fill him with an unfamiliar sense of calm and safety. He hasn't felt this way since...since...memories of eating strawberry french toast in a brightly lit kitchen spring to mind and his stomach churns. With each passing day his purpose seems to fall further beneath a haze of new thoughts. Thoughts that increasingly look more and more like Mallory. Her gentle doe eyes, the soothing monotone of her voice. The tiny smile that curves her lips whenever he settles nearby her as she reads, studies, prepares poultices and grinds herbs. He wonders if she notices she does that. With each thought that took her form, he shoved the darkness farther down inside him, desperate to hide it from her. He knew that if she saw it, if she really _knew,_ she'd run screaming. Just like everyone else had. Almost everyone else. She made him want to be good again. And oh, how he wanted it.

A gentle pulse of her grip drags him back to the present. His awareness stretches into the air, searching for water between the other invisible elements. Gingerly, with a caution he'd never exercised before, he convinces the water to grow colder and colder until each molecule drops around them, fluffy and white. Her magic ripples beside him, golden and warm, like a morning ray of sun on his shoulders.

But that familiar darkness that always looms at the edges of his mind tightens, choking his power. It slithers and hisses at him, attempting to wrestle away his control and -

Her tiny gasp of delight interrupts him and he opens his eyes. Snow blankets the room in a feathery layer, flurries still drifting through the air.

“You did it,” she says, a smile spreading across her face. The widest he'd seen yet. He returns with a flashing grin of his own and the sudden brilliance of it sets her blood singing. The earlier heat in her legs flares to life again, stronger and harder, leaving a throbbing ache at the apex of her thighs. Like their first meeting, electricity zips through her body and that power blooms in her mind, a bittersweet taste coating the inside of her mouth. Like blood and honey. The soft ruffling sound of feathers ( _wings,_ her mind supplies) fills her ears. Michael seems lost in the experience and she notices his pupils are blown wide, the black depths nearly swallowing those bands of blue.

Her face flushes and she rips her hand from his, smile gone. His sudden look of shock and hurt punctures her chest like an arrow. The power still whispers in the room, taunting her. Tempting her.

“I have to go,” she mutters, jumping up from her chair so quickly it nearly tips over. She flees the room, snow crunching underfoot. Michael watches her run, stunned. The temperature drops. Cordelia shivers, her breath clouding in the air. She spares a final look at Michael before leaving to follow Mallory.

* * *

 

He avoids her the rest of the night and the day after that. Madison suddenly disappears on some errand or another for Cordelia. She's become increasingly tight-lipped about the coming and goings of the older witches, and follows Michael around like a ghost.

Mallory keeps to her regular routine, cursing the betraying slide of her gaze to the empty chair next to her. She struggles to keep herself from searching the room for him. She knows he's watching her. She feels it, the dig of his eyes almost as potent as if she saw it for real.

That night, an anguished cry in the ether wakes her from a nightmare about an underground prison – snakes and gray and an uncomfortably familiar graze of long fingers against her jaw.

The magic of the house bunches around her, too dark and pained for her to ignore. Is she the only one who feels it? How does it not wake them all?

She follows it up another flight of stairs to the very end of the hall. Michael's room. The echoed pains of psychic energy sting like knives in her veins.

She raps once before slowly turning the handle and peeking around the door. The room is sweltering and sweat springs onto her upper lip immediately.

“Michael?”

Sheets drape around his waist, exposing the lines of his wide back. She sees his eyelashes flutter but he doesn't reply. She pads closer to the bed and can hear the shift in his breath from slow to faster, shorter, shallow. Still, he doesn't turn. Her hand drifts to his shoulder and he flinches when skin meets skin, as if she struck him. But he doesn't pull away.

She settles on the edge of his bed. He radiates heat like nothing she's ever felt. Her fingers trace cool patterns up and down the gracefully corded muscles of his bicep. The words slip out. “It scares me.”

That finally gets his attention. He shifts, one side at a time, until he's facing her. “What does?”

She grabs his hand. The _power_ explodes into her mind again, stronger than ever before. A new kind of heat floods her body, returning the ache to her cunt. She catches his sharp intake of breath.

“ _That,_ ” she replies. “What are we?”

He can't answer, can't find words, can't think about anything else except the shake of her rosebud lips and the utterly uncontrollable, burning _need_ to be closer. He grabs the front of her shirt in both fists and yanks her to him. Their lips tangle together in a symphony of heady power and lust and heat. She knots her fingers in his golden hair, mussed from sleep. She hadn't been able to stop thinking about the silken waves since she'd first laid eyes on him. Those hands she adores search her body, grasping every curve and dip, chasing the secrets from her skin. She gasps into his mouth as he delves further inside, licking into her with a hungry greed that sets her alight. His lips leave hers only long enough to rip her shirt over her head, before they find her skin again, biting and sucking down her neck, over her collarbone, dancing back and forth across that line between pain and pleasure. In one smooth motion she swings her leg over his hip and straddles him. He slots so perfectly between her thighs and she keens when his hard length bumps against her throbbing clit.

“I've never done this before,” she admits to him, and he pauses.

“Me either,” he confesses in a whisper.

She lets out a nervous giggle and he responds in like. “Do you want to?”

“Yes,” she breathes against his temple, clawing her hands into his back.

He leans away to look her in the eyes. “Are you sure?”

“Completely,” she assures him. She's never been more sure of anything in her life.

They meet in a sweetly awkward tangle of limbs and tentative movements. He keeps her in his lap, her legs wrapped around his waist, chest to chest, heartbeat to heartbeat, breath to breath.

They move, slowly, until Mallory's pain breaks and gives way to sheer pleasure. The power that floods their bodies helps too, heightening every sensation until they're all sparkling touches and gasps and she thinks maybe their souls are melting together.

And in that melting, she finds something vast and dark and roiling. _Evil._ He finds something staggering and blinding and pure. _Goodness._ She can't tell which belongs to whom and neither can he.

“Michael?” She gasps against his mouth. “What are we?”

“ _More,_ ” he purrs. “Everything. The beginning and the end.” The liquid roll of his voice pushes her to the end and she pulls him over the edge with her.

They fall asleep knotted together, her head tucked beneath his chin. Both their breaths come calm and even and they slumber, ignorant to the chaos outside.

* * *

 

Across the city, a lightening storm blazes through the night with terrifying fury, striking down trees, buildings, humans. Waves crash against the levies with no warning, swamping boats and tearing apart docks.

Animals howl and cry into the night.

Cordelia's eyes fly open and her hand automatically reaches for Misty's.

“Do you feel that?” Misty breathes in her shaking, sweet Southern croon.

“Something's awake,” Cordelia confirms. “Something powerful.”

“It shouldn't be,” Misty adds. “Something happened that never should have happened.”

Cordelia can't help but feel as though this is her fault. She made a critical error.

 _You never should have brought that boy across your threshold,_ a voice weeps in her mind and she whimpers.

* * *

 

Mallory slips out of Michael's bed right before daybreak, worried about reaching her room before anyone knew where she spent her night.

Murmuring voices below draw her attention. Cordelia, Myrtle, and Madison. _Back from her mysterious trip,_ Mallory thinks idly. And a fourth voice joins them, male and emphatic, it rises and falls with a musical lilt. They all sound grave and worried.

She can't help but creep to the edge of the staircase, inching down the steps one at a time as far as she dares. She whispers a spell soundlessly to herself, one meant to draw wayward words to the listening ear.

Madison and the man are telling a story in alternating rushes, stepping on each other's words. Mallory's joined in the middle of the conversation and at first she's confused, groping for context.

“Born of the darkness of the house,” the man hisses.

“Michael's the fucking Antichrist,” Madison tacks on with a bite.

Mallory's heart lurches to a stop and danger floods her veins, denial screaming from every cell. _No, no, no. Madison is just being dramatic. She's like that._

The man's voice takes over again and he recounts a ritual – a virgin sacrifice. A heart, ripped still beating from her screaming chest. Then consumed by the same lips whose taste still lingers on her own.

A cry shreds through Mallory and she can't muffle it. The voices cut off and four sets of feet rush up the staircase. Cordelia takes in Mallory's love-tangled hair, bitten lips, and the smells of satisfaction and lust that waft from her skin. She turns tear-filled eyes to those of her Supreme.

“What have I done?”

* * *

 

 

**Now**

“How can you defeat me, when I've already won?”

Memories are flooding Mallory's mind faster than she can keep up with. Michael stands at the top of the steps before them and Cordelia's response is just a ringing in her ears.

She can't move, she can't breathe. She thinks her legs might fold beneath her.

“When I'm done, you'll all wish you were still dead.”

Mallory stares up at a face that is now excruciatingly intimate to her. The cruel tilt of his mouth and the predatory feline narrowing of his eyes reveal no weakness or recognition. He doesn't even look at her.

Michael, her Michael. The only man she'd ever loved.

And he'd killed her.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! 
> 
> Title from the song I Want to Destroy Something Beautiful by Josh Woodward. It's the most Millary song I've yet to hear.
> 
> Theres a part 2 now!


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